Religion and American Culture: A Brief History

by George M. Marsden

While Americans still profess to be one of the most religious people in the industrialized world, many aspects of American culture have long been secular and materialistic. That is just one of the many paradoxes, contradictions, and surprises in the relationship between Christianity and American culture. In this book George Marsden, a leading historian of American Christianity and award-winning author, tells the story of that relationship in a concise and thought-provoking way.

Surveying the history of religion and American culture from the days of the earliest European settlers right up through the elections of 2016, Marsden offers the kind of historically and religiously informed scholarship that has made him one of the nation’s most respected and decorated historians. Students in the classroom and history readers of all ages will benefit from engaging with the story Marsden tells.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, American History, Church History, Christianity

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He has written extensively on the interaction between Christianity and the American culture and has published numerous books, including Jonathan Edwards: A Life, which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize given for the best work of history. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: A survey of the interaction of religion and American civil culture from the nation's beginnings up to 2016.

"The United States is both remarkably religious and remarkably profane."

The opening line of this survey of the history of the interaction of religion and American culture is an accurate thesis summary of this work. In part, it reflects the point of view of the author, George M. Marsden. He notes in the introduction to the work that his thinking is shaped by an Augustinian outlook that recognizes both the dignity of humans in God's image and the reality of human evil, the parallel cultures of "City of God" and the "City of Man," and that Christians inhabit both cities.

Marsden traces this interaction from the Protestant heritage of the early immigrants, which held sway in the country until the Civil War and the conflicted engagement with Native Peoples--from uneasy coexistence, to violent displacement, to occasional mission efforts--a conflicted record. He examines the different streams of thought contributing to the American revolution--and how they converged and diverged. He examines the heritage of dissent, the secular and deist founders, and the ideas shared in common by Locke and the Puritans. He notes a paradox of high ideals of liberty and justice, and the beginnings of manifest destiny and the use of power to displace native peoples, and hold Africans in servitude. These threads continue into the nineteenth century with the revivalist spread of evangelical culture, marked by increasing levels of education as frontier denominations establish colleges. This culminates in institutions like Oberlin College, motivated by religious revival, enrolling female students, and advocating abolition in an increasingly divided evangelical church along the geographic lines of north and south.

The post-Civil war era on its face seemed to reflect a continued advance of Protestantism, including Protestant missions. At the same time developments of both social progressivism, and the advent of Darwinism and higher critical theories brought the first cracks in the established position of both mainline and evangelical Protestants. They also faced an increasingly plural situation with the immigration of large numbers of Catholics and Jews, as well as the growing influence of the African-American church, which in turn, made its contribution to the rise of pentecostalism.

The fault lines become more pronounced in the early twentieth century with divides in mainline denominations between north and south, a rise of fundamentalism in reaction to liberal scholarship. John Dewey's secular ideals prevail in the educational establishment. The Niebuhr brothers and Karl Barth offer a neo-orthodox alternative to liberal scholarship in more mainline contexts while those of evangelical belief retreat into fundamentalism.

Marsden notes another great reversal post-World War 2 with the rise in church membership, the baby boom, the ministry of Billy Graham, a re-framed culturally engaged evangelicalism, as well as the growth of Jewish and Catholic influence in the country. The African-American church led by Dr. King awakens and asserts its call for justice and civil rights. Then a rising evangelical movement becomes increasingly politically engaged and Marsden traces this history from the rise of Jimmy Carter to the election of 2016, chronicling an increasingly fragmented, secularized, and polarized country.

This "brief history," as the subtitle calls it, covers extensive ground, and various movements, sects, and various religious communities, in a history at once descriptive, and illustrative of the "religious and profane" theme. Marsden particularly portrays the conflict between religious ideals and our treatment of native peoples and African-Americans, the changing face of Protestant privilege, the unholy alliances that have existed between Christians and our government throughout our history, the growing pluralism, both religious and irreligious, and the perennial tension between the country's religious and secular ideals.

Marsden concludes with a few thoughts on preserving a truly pluralistic society, which he believes begins with clarifying the rules that protect free speech and genuine diversity within various sub-communities, protecting them from the tyranny of the majority. He concludes by noting why knowledge of our history is so vital to this project:

"This book is a history, and it is much easier to describe how the United States got to the point it has reached with respect to its secular and religious diversity than it is to prescribe exactly how its future with respect to those diversities might be improved. Still, we can safely say that there will be no improvement without historical understanding of how we got to be where we are. One lesson is sure. When it comes to religion, it will not do to resort to easy generalizations; evaluation of its roles must always be nuanced. Such nuance will help us see that religion, even at what we may regard its best, appears in human affairs almost always as a mixed blessing."

Marsden has given us the resources for that nuanced "understanding of how we have gotten to be where we are." This seems critical for religious and political leaders alike, to enable wise and humble decisions that avoid the hubris and folly that sadly has too often characterized our history.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a flyover history of American religion. Thus, this book has both a lot to offer that other books don't offer and misses a lot that such a book cannot include. Allow me to explain: history is sometimes thought of as the study of causation. Why did the Peloponnesian war begin? What were the socio-economic forces that caused the Industrial Revolution? How did the American church become individualistic? All of these questions are looking for causes. But the dicey problem is when we look to the past, we are reading and perusing a collection of sources (and artifacts) and assembling them into a picture. By so doing, we necessarily cut out information that does not fit the story, and hypothesize about things the documents do not tell us. But the world is a tangled mess and while generalization is necessary, the more specific our claims, the more carefully we need to scrutinize the evidence so that grand narratives do not squash out the particularities of specific situations. Confused? Here's an example: the First Great Awakening is sometimes seen as the birthplace of American Evangelicalism. But how do we define Evangelicalism? Is the phenomenon that we are familiar with today traceable to those events? Were those events as big as they looked? And were there older revivals that inspired the Great Awakening? Where does Evangelicalism begin and end and how does it relate to it? All hard to say, and not for people like you and me, but for people who were immersed in the evidence. We need fewer historical periods and more scrutinization of the specific, the local, and a lot more humility to say "we don't know."

So a book like Marsden's is useful insofar as it kind of gives you a lay of the land. For instance, I was reminded of the Keswick movement, and of many Evangelical figures that I had forgotten about. In particular, I was struck by how big a deal 19th century postmillennialism was, and how embarrassing a movement it was (basically 19th century liberal utopianism). I was also struck by how mixed evangelicalism in the 70s and 80s was, by how weirdly strong American Catholicism was pre-vatican 2, and by how much more conservative laymen are than their pastors (the mainliners had a lot of good people in them, even though their pastors had long since abandoned a lot of the principles of true Christianity).

Anyway, this book was a great overview of a lot of different streams and it didn't overstate too much the causes so much as try to observe the trends. At the end, Marsden pulls off the neutral historian hat and tries to discuss the significance of pluralism. He calls for Christians to try to foster a genuinely pluralistic society that allows cross-religious dialogue in the public square. It's not as inspiring here as in his book on the 50s where his attack is on secularism, but he still raises some interesting points and, yes, I think public dialogue would be nice to have again someday.

[Ryan Handermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marsden speaks in a broad, brushed terms in this book, which is helpful for an overview, but presumes that you have background in the details of the history. However, he has helpful and perceptive comments for understanding our peculiar Americanized Christianity throughout - and its broader application in our own time.

"Lacking long established traditions and rituals, Americans have been susceptible to waves of popular enthusiasm for people who are stars. This pattern had its beginnings in revivalism and remains a prominent dimension of American cultural and religion life." Needless to say, this remains true of our presidential candidates, and particularly of the current evangelical fascination with Donald Trump, even before he takes office again.

I had often wondered about the origins of Baptists in America, and the 1700s was formative in moving the small Baptists movement to, by the end of the century to "the largest religious group in the country." (33)

KEY: "In American wars, national loyalty has always been demanded above church loyalty. Presbyterians killed Presbyterians during the Revolution; Anglicans killed Anglicans. In the Civil War, Baptists killed countless Baptists, Methodists countless Methodists, Catholics and Jews killed fellow Catholics and Jews, and so forth. This has been the practice in every war." (49)

The novelty of the Constitution: "The new Constitution was indeed conspicuously revolutionary in creating the first major government in Christendom that was not officially Christian." (51). As a side note, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 required its representatives to take this oath: I do believe in one God, the Creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration."

An interesting anecdote is that state taxes used to go to support local churches. This was true as late as 1818, when the last state tax in Connecticut was ended, which had supported the Congregationalist Churches.

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

REL 495: Religious Study Seminar

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

America is simultaneously secular and religious. Marsden gives many fascinating examples of this (e.g. The Civil War, Bill Clinton). This work traces this paradoxical theme and shows how religion and culture have shaped each other in American history.